Page 19 of The Monster’s Weakness

She decided to stop at the pharmacy near her apartment where her pills came from. Maybe they’d explain things better. She wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight if she kept worrying.

“Hello, can you please check on my prescription status, please? I’m curious how it’s being paid.”

After getting her information, the pharmacy assistant plucked away at her keyboard. “You’re all paid up for the next four months.”

“Four months? What happens after that?”

“Well, I see the payments have been made in lump sums. In cash.”

Gemma froze.

“What? Who paid cash for my meds?”

She smiled. “I’m not sure. Don’t you know?”

Her heart was beating quickly now. So many thoughts, theories, and worries flooded her mind. “Thanks for your help.”

Gemma rushed from the pharmacy and back to her car.

****

By the time he reached her building, he’d been awake for fifty-two hours.

He had a split above his eyebrow, three stitches in his side that had been put there without anesthetic, and someone else’s blood dried beneath one thumbnail. None of that concerned him.

Gemma. For three fucking days, he hadn’t called her. That knowledge had been eating away at him the entire time. Of all the possible fucking times for a job to go wrong. It was supposed to have taken just six hours tops. In, out, finished before dawn. He’d planned to be home by seven. Shower by eight. Call her by nine. He’d even known what he was going to say to her. Then everything had gone to hell.

His phone hadn’t survived the first night. Neither had his car. He’d gotten the contract done and the payment had already been wired to his account. But by the time he’d gotten out, getting to her had become less a matter of distance than making absolutely certain nobody followed him there. He could survive being found. She couldn’t.

Now, finally, he was standing outside her apartment. He knocked. Nothing.

His stomach tightened.

He knocked again. There was movement inside, and relief hit him hard. Then the door opened three inches. The chain was on.

“Hey.”

There was a long pause of silence. “Hi.” She wasn’t smiling.

For three days he’d been thinking about her smile. He’d carried that image through seventy-two hours of absolute shit. Now she looked at him as if he were just someone she’d once known.

“You okay?” he asked.

She huffed. His attention sharpened.

“You really didn’t have to come over.”

He was exceptionally good at reading people. His life frequently depended upon noticing tiny shifts in expression before the person making them even knew they’d made them. He couldn’t read her now. Or maybe he didn’t want to.

He glanced at the chain again.

That made her look right at him. “You haven’t contacted me in three days.”

“My phone was destroyed.”

“Okay.”

“And I couldn’t get back.”